From Zero to a $500K Year in 3 Years: A New Recruiter’s Playbook

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
The Recruiter Sales and Business Development Summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2026. It is going to be the best, biggest, most focused conference for recruiters to help them grow with business development and sales. Remember, with all the summits, the live sessions are free. If you want to go for the replays, you got two options. You can go VIP on the Summit platform or you can join the community, have access to all the summits. But this is a summit that you do not want to miss. If you want 2026 to be the absolute best year possible there, be ready to learn and be ready to crush it.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:34]:
I'll see you there. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. How did you find your first three clients when you like jumped out of the nest?

Isaac James [00:00:45]:
First one was luck. It's like, what are they going to do? Like, if they laugh at you? Okay, great, it doesn't really matter. You just hang up the phone and they're gone. Like, you don't have to talk to them again. So like, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? And that could turn into a million dollar call. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin and Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:17]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:06]:
No admin, no silos, no lost info, nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for Modern Recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com I am excited about this Episode of the Elite recruiter podcast. Because here's the thing, we do a lot of times interviewing these billers that have been billing huge for so many years, they've been crushing it for a decade, or they've just started their own business, but they got a whole background that they're leaning up on. Here's the cool thing. No matter where you are, no matter when you started, you can draw a line in the sand. I'm so excited about this guest because he's going to share his exactly what he did when he knew nothing about recruiting to where he's now absolutely crushing it.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:04]:
The short amount of time, what he learned, how he was trained, that what's working when it comes to business development. So that way if you are a new recruiter, you are just starting off in this industry, you are just starting off in this crazy world of misfit toys. You can crush it just like him. Welcome, Isaac.

Isaac James [00:03:21]:
Thank you, Ben. Pleasure to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:24]:
All right, real quick, before we do a deep dive into this real quick, I'd love for you to share your numbers as a new recruiter and then a 30 second self introduction.

Isaac James [00:03:34]:
Wait, yeah, so I'm three years in. Year one for me was 270, year two hit 400 and then this year it's December 1st, so I'm at 483 right now. So should hit the elusive 500k this year. So that's the goal. So that's my numbers and then quick background on me. So my name's Isaac. I recruit with a company called Carnegie Search. We're recruiting firm in Charlotte and I focus on placing technical salespeople, sales engineers, territory managers, and then engineering for manufacturing.

Isaac James [00:04:03]:
So that's my background. I got into it straight out of college, went to Liberty University. Go Flames. And so just kind of really stumbled into the industry. Had no idea what recruiting was. Happened to meet a great mentor who was starting his own company and then kind of just ran from it from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:18]:
All right, I gotta ask because I know Mike really well and Mike is absolutely amazing. How the hell did you end up in Mike's company? You gotta, you gotta share the story.

Isaac James [00:04:27]:
Yeah, so it was really, I mean, it was, it was a blessing. I was finishing up my last year. I found out the semester before I was gonna graduate that I was gonna graduate early. I sat on my counselor and they were like, hey, you have like two classes left. And I was like, oh, okay, sweet. I guess I gotta figure out what I wanna do with my life. And so I had a mutual friend from church connect me with Mike and was like, hey, he was a financial advisor. Hey, I just got a new client.

Isaac James [00:04:52]:
Great guy, you know, he's a recruiter and he's looking to hire somebody. I know you want to do sales. Would you want to talk to him? And I had no idea what recruiting was. I thought Mike was, like, working for a company and was going to recruit me there. And I was like, yeah, sure, you know, I'll talk to him and see what it's about, you know, what the job is. And again, had no idea that recruiting was an industry. And so get on the phone with him and he was like, hey, I'm Mike. You know, here's what I do.

Isaac James [00:05:14]:
I'm from Massachusetts. I, you know, work for a recruiting agency. Do you know what that is? I was like, no clue. So he starts telling me about it. He was like, long story short, I just moved to Charlotte earlier this year. Like, I've been building out my company and I have too many clients for myself to handle. So, you know, looking to hire somebody else. Here's what the job would be, you know, here's what you'd be doing.

Isaac James [00:05:34]:
How does that sound to you? And I was like, man, that. That sounds cool. I remember the one thing that stood out to me was it sounded like magic just being a voice on the phone. And you, for the most part, like, never meet the candidate you're talking to. Sometimes you only meet the client that you're talking to, but you just talk to them on the phone. You connect to people and you make magic happen with a phone and a computer. So I was like, that sounds sweet. And so we met probably three or four times over a two month period.

Isaac James [00:06:01]:
And I didn't apply to a single other job. I didn't go to a job fair, which my dad was hounding me about. He's like, dude, don't place all your eggs in one basket. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Like, this is what I'm gonna do. And so it worked out. Mike gave me a job offer. There was really no company.

Isaac James [00:06:16]:
It was no benefits or anything. And I just, like, took the risk. So here we are.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:21]:
I want to take a step back.

Isaac James [00:06:23]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:23]:
Tell me about the interview with Mike.

Isaac James [00:06:26]:
Yeah, so this was funny. So we met on the phone probably twice. And then he was like, hey, it seems like you'd be a good fit for this. You should come in and let's meet in person and let's kind of do a day in the life. So just block out A couple hours. You can come meet with me. And I was like, great, sounds good. So he sends me the address.

Isaac James [00:06:43]:
So I get there, I walk in. It's a nice big office building. And he's like, hey, so this is kind of an office share deal. I don't have an office right now. And I was like, okay. And he's like, so I just, like, rented a day off for the day so we can sit and figure it out. And I was like, all right, I don't know any better, so let's do it. So we go, we sit down.

Isaac James [00:07:00]:
It was a pretty small office. And so he's like, all right, you know, here's kind of the lay of the land. Here's the gist. Show me how recruiter works. Work, zoom, info, all this sort of stuff. And he's like, I'm just gonna start rocking and rolling. I'm just gonna show you what I do. I was like, cool.

Isaac James [00:07:14]:
So he starts making some calls. You know, he's got appointments, he's checking with clients, doing that sort of thing. He's like, all right, the next thing I want to do is I want to sit down and have you make some calls. I was like, okay, I've never made a cold call in my life, but let's do it. So he's like, here's your list. Pulls up 20 people for me to call. And he's like, you know, here's the script you're gonna do. So you're just gonna say, hey, I'm Isaac and I'm a recruiter.

Isaac James [00:07:36]:
I've got a manufacturing engineer job available in Charlotte. Are you open to hear about it? And he was like, if they say yes, you know, here's like, a little bit of info you can give them. If they say no, all good odds are nobody's going to answer. He was like, so I'll take the first 10 and see? And then you take the next 10. I was like, all right, sounds good. So he starts calling. Nobody ANSWERS. Voicemail.

Isaac James [00:07:56]:
Voicemail 10. Voicemail straight. I'm like, great. Nobody's going to answer. So I'm getting the voicemail cadence in my head, like, getting it down. And one other thing he told me. He was like, hey, if they answer. If they say, hi, this is Joe, you just say, hi, Joe, and you jump into it.

Isaac James [00:08:10]:
Hi, John, Isaac. I'm a recruiter. He's like, if they just say hello, you say, hi, is this Joe? I'm like, okay, I got it. Sounds good. They're not going to answer. We're all good to go. I've got my voicemail ready, so make my first dial. Phone rings twice.

Isaac James [00:08:25]:
A lady answers the phone. This guy's name is Joe. I panic. I was like, the only thing I know to do is say, hi, is this Joe? So I'm like, hi, is this Joe? And she was like, no, who is Joe? I was like, oh, I don't know, I'm sorry. And just like hung up. So that was my first ever cold call, was an epic fail and we just both died laughing. And then I think I made a couple more calls. Nobody answered me to voicemails.

Isaac James [00:08:47]:
I was like, man, this is great. This is a lot of fun. But that was like my first intro into what recruiting is.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:54]:
And I gotta ask, how did Mike, like, you know, there's a lot of recruiters out there that are looking at growing their company firm owners. How did Mike sell the dream of recruiting to you?

Isaac James [00:09:06]:
Yeah, so he really, he kind of told me, you know, he explained what recruiting is, what we do. And really the thing that drew me to it was the first thing he told me. He was like, hey, this is my situation. Like I was at a big publicly traded recruiting firm. I ended up leaving. Like I realized, you know, there was nothing more they could teach me and I could do it on my own and make more money. So I left and, you know, moved to Charlotte to get away from a non compete. And my goal is I want to build the biggest recruiting firm in Charlotte.

Isaac James [00:09:33]:
That's my goal. I want to teach people how to do it the right way. I want to equip them the right way and basically give them all the tools that I didn't get and help them to succeed. And I was like, that sounds cool. And he told me more about his background of, you know, kind of bounced around a couple of jobs, didn't really, you know, know what he was good at or what he could do. And then found recruiting and was like, I'm just going to work really hard and, you know, want to prove myself and be good at something. And that was something that really resonated with me of coming out of college. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I just wanted a shot at something to prove I could be really good at it.

Isaac James [00:10:06]:
And so those two things Mike really sold me on, like, hey, come build something with me. We're going to make it happen. And all you have to do is work really hard and I'm going to teach you how to do the rest. And I was like, I'm so Man. And so no benefits, no office, no nothing. I was like, sign me up. Like, I'm going to wherever we're going, I'm going to take this journey with you, and we're going to make it happen. And so that's kind of how I got started.

Isaac James [00:10:27]:
And one thing I liked that he told me is recruiting is very much a numbers game. Like, if you come in and you're willing to make the calls and do the output day in and day out, good things will happen. And it's like, you know, there's not a ton of advantages. You know, if you step into a world of financial advising, you might get your dad's whole book of business, right, and you're set up for life recruiting. It's not really that way. Like, you might get handed a couple of good clients, but you still have to work hard and be a good recruiter to make it happen. There's not a ton of advantages you can get. So that kind of resonated of, like, I want an even playing field.

Isaac James [00:10:59]:
I just want to come in and work the hardest, and I'll beat everybody else out. So that was kind of my mindset when I came in and what drew me to it.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:07]:
So as we start, like, walking through your getting started, I want the listeners to look at this from two different lenses. If you're in the recruiting chair, like, what can you pick up so that way you can get started faster? What can you, like, rewire to draw the line in the sand to get going? And if you're a firm owner, I want you to also look at this. Like, how do I get my people set up for success? So those are the two ways I want you to think about this. So let's look at this. Your first week. How did you get started? How did you learn from Mike, and what kind of numbers were you looking at and what were you doing?

Isaac James [00:11:43]:
Yeah. So day one felt like the first day of school. It was like, come in, get your notebook, write your notes down, do your orientation, get email, set up, all that sort of stuff. So first day was kind of a wash. Second day, come in. And also, like, you know, mind you, Mike, this was his first hire, first employee. So I was thinking, like, Mike's got it all figured out. No, like, we were just.

Isaac James [00:12:03]:
We were spitballing, going pretty much as we go. So second day, I come in, my email set up, you know, my recruiter seat set up. And so we both kind of looked at each other like, all right, what's next? What are we doing? And so it just made sense to sit with Mike and figure out, you know, listen to what Mike was doing and learn from him. So we sat down. I basically just sat right beside him at his desk and just saw what he did for a whole day. And so, you know, the clients he's talked to, how he builds his list, how he basically does a job intake and all this sort of stuff. Day three, he looked at me, he was like, all right man, it's time to get started. Like, it's time to do the job.

Isaac James [00:12:38]:
So he gave me a job to work on. He gave me some general details about the job, sat down with me for about an hour, helped me build a list, start calling. So I loaded up 50 profiles in Zoom info just started rocking and rolling. And so that was really how I learned was on the fly, come in and just start doing the job. The nice thing was, you know, Mike was right behind me. So it's like, I have a question. Just tap him on the shoulder. Hey, what do you think about this? How did that call sound? That sort of thing? And I think one thing that really expedite my learning process was just being a sponge and just hearing things Mike would do and be like, okay, I'm going to try that.

Isaac James [00:13:14]:
And then some things would work, some things wouldn't. So I would keep going. And for the numbers thing, so he sat me down and we broke down KPIs of like, hey, here's how many calls you should make a day. This should translate into this number of sendouts per week, this number of interviews and so on. And so I remember the number that I really stuck with was the amount of calls you should make a day. And so it was 80 calls. If you make 80 calls a day, good things are going to happen. You're going to get.

Isaac James [00:13:39]:
I think the goal at the time was to get like 10 send outs and then have five interviews a week. But I just focused on that. 80 calls a day, I'm going to make it happen. My goal was, I was like, if Mike tells me 80, I'm going to make more than that. So the goal for myself was I'm going to make 100 a day. And so that's what I did. So for the first six months I came in and some days I would hit like 150, some days I would hit 90. But I was always above that 80 mile.

Isaac James [00:14:02]:
And if Mike's walking out the door at 5:30 and I'm at 89, I'm staying. It's like, I gotta, I gotta hit My number that was really the goal for me was whatever number Mike's gives me, I wanna just overshoot that and get as much output as possible and just hope the good things happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:17]:
And when you started out, did Mike tell you that this was going to be a long time on the phone?

Isaac James [00:14:23]:
Yeah. So that was one of the first things he told me. Our initial call. He was like, hey, by the way, like, this is a cold call, heavy job. He was like, are you comfortable making 60 plus cold calls a day? And me having never cold call anybody, but just liking to talk to people, I was like, sure, sounds great. And then after I made my first cold call in the office that day, when that lady answered and I asked her if she was Joe, I was like, I don't think it can get much worse than that. So I think the initial fear kind of left and it just started to get fun. If I just get to talk to a bunch of random people all day, I'm in.

Isaac James [00:14:53]:
Let's do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:54]:
When did your first deal finally close?

Isaac James [00:14:57]:
So my first deal came towards the end of my second month. So Mike sat me down and he was like, hey, you know, here's the KPI target, month one. I'm not expecting you to close any deals. He's like, if you do it, that's great. Like, month two should really probably have something by month two. But like, month three is the cutoff. Like, if you don't have something by month three, it's probably like, something's going on here. It's probably not working out.

Isaac James [00:15:21]:
So I was like, okay, sounds good, Whatever. So month one comes, I had a good amount of output, had stuff in pipeline, things just didn't close. It was like, I probably worked on five jobs that month. And they. I mean, every reason you can think of. It was like, search got frozen. Candidate, you know, pulled out last second and just weird things are happening. So I know no better.

Isaac James [00:15:43]:
And Mike was kind of giving me a, you know, the cheerful, happy face and was like, hey, man, no problem. Like, it's okay. This happens. I come to find out later, Mike was sweating it. He was like, I don't know what's going on. Like this kid, It's. We're getting a lot of output, things aren't working. But I don't know any of this.

Isaac James [00:15:57]:
I'm just like, oh, it's all good. No deal. She'll come in month two, the first three weeks, it's like, same thing. I have a lot of output. We got a lot of people interviewing. Nothing's Closed. And so I'm kind of starting to be like, okay, like, when's it going to happen? Is this normal? What are we doing? And then I remember about week three of the second month deal, one closes, and it was like, big celebration, sigh of relief, we got it. And then it was like an avalanche.

Isaac James [00:16:23]:
I think I had five deals close in a week in that time period. And Mike and I were also moving across the hallway into a bigger office. So we're like carrying boxes back and forth. And he comes in, he's like, dude, you're not going to believe it, another deal closed. And so we were like, no way. So we had a big second week, but it took almost all of two months to get my first deal.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:45]:
I don't think I got a deal until after three months.

Isaac James [00:16:49]:
Really?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:50]:
Mike.

Isaac James [00:16:50]:
Mike would have been like, then you're out of here.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:52]:
Get out, get lost.

Isaac James [00:16:53]:
You're gone, man. I guess one thing to know too, because I think people hear deal, and I know some people start immediately, full desk. I didn't do that. So I started just flipping candidates to Mike. So that was a lot of, you know, that allowed me to have five deals close. It wasn't like I had full, five full side deals.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:08]:
Explain that for the listeners. Like, what were you doing for that? For the, the desk?

Isaac James [00:17:14]:
So when I first started, and what we still do here is like typically your first month, or at least first few weeks, we call them flip deals. And so that is I would essentially make whatever, a hundred calls. And my call is, hey, my name is Isaac, I'm a recruiter. I got this job. Would you be open to hear about it? If it's yes, I would give them like a 3 32nd rundown. Here's the company, here's the job, you know, here's what it does, here's what it pays. How does that sound to you? And if they're like, hey, that sounds good, I'd be interested. I would then flip them to Mike and then, okay, great, my boss, Mike, can tell you more about it.

Isaac James [00:17:47]:
He's available, you know, whatever. Tomorrow at 3pm could you talk then? And if they say yes, I'm just setting them up and then I move on to the next call and Mike runs with that candidate. And so we call those flips. And so that counts for like 25% of a deal. And then you move on, you graduate to where you're doing the whole candidate side of that, you know, Then I would take a candidate and they're my candidate. And then Mike owns the client and kind of manages the client relationship. And then I just do we call those splits. You split it in half.

Isaac James [00:18:18]:
And so I would do a split. And so most of my first year, because Mike had a lot of clients and we, you know, at that point, we really didn't need more clients. We just needed to fill the jobs we had. Most of my first year was doing splits, which, you know, was kind of nice. I got to come in and just learn recruiting and really focus on that craft of just recruiting side, just candidate side, and then branched over to the full side, which is, you know, then building a desk. So that's kind of how that differentiated. I think I got. I probably had my first split deal.

Isaac James [00:18:48]:
So my first 50% deal was probably month three. You know, the first, like, you know, month or two was just the split or just the flints.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:56]:
If there's a lot of people that when they get started, they're dropped into a full desk. Are you happy that you got started off on the. The 180 side than a full desk?

Isaac James [00:19:07]:
I am. I think there's value in both of it. I think if you can come and improve that, you can swim on a full desk, you can scale it faster because you're getting 100% of the deals and you're building out your own client base faster. That's also tough because you have less of a life preserver. The nice thing that I came into was one, there are some safety, and I don't have to go find clients and try to learn the whole game, which is tough. You know, the whole game all at once. I can just focus on candidate side. And I think really the biggest value is they were good orders.

Isaac James [00:19:40]:
It's like Mike was great at finding good quality clients and building the relationships. So I was working on good orders. And like, if you just walk into a full desk scenario, you. You might get a client and you spend all month trying to fill that client's jobs, and they're not serious about hiring, and it turns into nothing. So then you're kind of screwed because you just spent a month of something that's not going to, you know, nothing's going to come to fruition. So I got to work on a high volume of really good jobs. So that was really nice. And then I think as I started to build my desk, it was kind of the trade off of, like, all right, now I'm in year two and I'm building a desk from scratch.

Isaac James [00:20:15]:
Whereas, you know, maybe if I started full desk, I would have built that desk faster. So there's pros and cons. But I'm glad that we did it the way that we did it. I think it was great.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:23]:
We'll talk about graduating or building that out in a second. I want to talk more about your first year, like how did you set up the structure of your day to be successful in your first year?

Isaac James [00:20:35]:
Yeah. So I think some of it was trial and error and then some of it was structured. A lot of it was, hey, what does Mike do? I'm going to do the same thing. And it was obviously different because he's, you know, managing a pretty existing wealthy book of business. So you know, he's got a lot of clients to talk to. That's how he starts his day off. For me it was I'm just doing recruiting so I had to really figure out hey, what's beneficial for me, how should I structure things. And what I landed on is pretty much what I would do running just a candidate side desk.

Isaac James [00:21:04]:
I would come in, Mike and I would meet at 8:30 and we would do like a probably 15 minute meeting. And really I should say the first 15 minutes of my day was just catching up on LinkedIn, Recruiter Inbox and my emails, you know, what's come in that I get, resumes, how they look, that sort of thing. That was from 8:30 to 8:45 we sit down, have about a 15 minute meeting and then it was off to the races. Let's go. So you know, I might spend the next 30 minutes writing up a couple candidates to send to clients or to send a mic or something and then from there it's okay, let's start recruiting. And so typically what I would do is I would figure out whatever job I was working on for the day, you know, whether it was a new job or I'm kind of following up on the job from yesterday. I will go through and build my recruiter search and for about an at least an hour all I'm doing is building a recruiter search and then looking through profiles. And so the way that I do it, I'm very meticulous and organized in recruiter and so I go through and everything goes into a project.

Isaac James [00:22:00]:
I know some people kind of just willy nilly it and do it. I want to stay organized. Everything goes into a project. I would add the goal for me is before I start calling, on average I want to have 50 people in my project pipeline. And obviously some jobs you might not have 50 relevant candidates, some you might have even more than that. But the goal is I want to have 50. So I find 50 good candidates. And then from there, at that point, I'm probably pretty close to lunchtime, you know, probably like an hour before lunch, I'm starting my call block.

Isaac James [00:22:30]:
And so the goal is, typically what I would do is maybe I would have more than an hour, but I would want to get to at least 40 calls before lunch, kind of get to the halfway point and then I go take lunch and then I'll come back from lunch and kind of reevaluate. Hey, how's my pipeline looking? Did I just crush it all morning and have, you know, Tim conversations and getting resumes? Probably not, but if so, great. Maybe we move on. And then if not, like, how is my project pipeline looking? Like, do I need to tweak it and go find more candidates or do I still have more to call? And then I would basically call through all those until I'm out. And then I reevaluate Some jobs. You get lucky and it's like you call for one day and you probably have enough candidates. And so from there I would kind of look through, hey, Mike, you know, what should I do? Maybe I go to an old search, figure something out. Or more realistically, I'm kind of tweaking for tomorrow and figuring out the game plan of all right, you know, how do I want to search tomorrow? Maybe I look at different skill sets, different job titles, change something and figure out what that needs to be.

Isaac James [00:23:30]:
And then usually towards the end of the day, I would set up appointments. Whether it was from that day or from the day before, I would set up appointments probably. So we worked till 5:30. So for me, most of 4:00 clock to 5:30 was just appointments. You know, people are getting out of work, they're able to talk to me. Maybe I'd caught them at a bad time earlier or got a LinkedIn message form and set them up. But from 4 to 5:30 I'm doing my appointments and then, you know, 5:30 comes around, I'm done, I'm heading out. If I have more calls to make, I'll kind of stick around until 6 or whenever I'm done.

Isaac James [00:24:04]:
And then I would head out. So that was kind of how I found I structured my day up. It was pretty simple. And that's, you know, that's not doing biz dev, that's just doing candidate side. But it was pretty simple, allowed me to get as much volume as I possibly could, and I didn't. That was for me, the most efficient way to do things.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:20]:
Your first year. How did you stay focused?

Isaac James [00:24:22]:
Yeah, Good question. So for me, year one I really dedicate. So first thing, I graduated early in December and all my friends graduated in June, the next June. So I had like, no friends. I moved back home. There was like, nobody to hang out with. There's all my friends were still at school. So, yeah, it's kind of sad, but it really helped.

Isaac James [00:24:44]:
It was pretty simple. So it was like, all right, I go to work, I go to the gym. I have nothing else to do, so I just focus on what I'm going to do tomorrow. So that was first six months. There was no competition for my time, which I'm really grateful for of it allow. And that was my goal. I was like, hey, I'm just going to hunker down. Year one for me is I'm going to lock in.

Isaac James [00:25:05]:
I'm really going to focus on my career and kind of getting this started. And so that's what I did. And so I'm a creature of habit. I love routines. And so I would figure out, all right, here's my bedtime, here's my schedule, here's what, I'm going to the gym. And would religiously stick to that. And so, you know, I'm not having these crazy late nights. I wasn't, you know, doing anything wild.

Isaac James [00:25:24]:
It was just pretty much focusing on work and then working the next day again.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:29]:
So looking now you're in year three. Think about the. The volume that you had, the work ethic that you had, the amount of people that you spoke to. How did you feel that compounded into year two and three?

Isaac James [00:25:43]:
I think year one was huge for me. The first little bit was just learning. It was learning how to do the game. And then really, I would say towards the end of the year, was trying to, as much as I could in a year, master the craft of candidate side recruiting. And that really propelled me into year two, where Mike and I sat down. Beginning of the year, we'd hired one other person and we're bringing on board two people early year two. And so it was like, hey, man, I've got now, you know, I've got five mouths to feed of my job orders. So it's like, you know, when I came in, there was no competition.

Isaac James [00:26:17]:
I had all the great jobs. Now it's, you know, you kind of got it. It's time. Go find your own jobs. And so that was the nest. Not entirely. He was like, hey, man, you'll still have some stuff. But it was kind of like the.

Isaac James [00:26:28]:
The hint of, hey, you know, I got people to feed, so you got to go find your own. So being able to spend a year of just mastering candidate side and getting to the point where I was good at that, figured out how to effectively and efficiently search for candidates, you know, how to talk to them, how to get them interested, how to walk them through the process that helped year two come to Biz Dev. Because now I know, I know who's good. Like, I know what a good candidate looks like. I know how to go find that. I can do that for you. So I could sell myself on doing that. And so that allowed me to, you know, start to pick up clients at a fairly efficient rate and pretty quick and then be able to actually fill their jobs.

Isaac James [00:27:04]:
And it was great to see what Mike's candidates, or excuse me, what Mike's clients looked like of the quality of his clients. So I would talk to some and be like, this is a trash job. Like, I probably shouldn't work on this. Like, I should just go find more job orders. And I really started to appreciate more of what, you know, Mike offered when I was like, I'm going to go find some great job orders that are going to be these, you know, legacy clients right away. And it's like, it doesn't happen right away. You know, I was finding the bottom of the barrel. And I was like, man, I kind of want to just go back and start working on Mike's jobs again.

Isaac James [00:27:33]:
But I had his power through. So I think being able to figure that out really helped translate into year two once I was starting to work on more that full desk.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:43]:
How did you find your first three clients when you jumped out of the nest on the sales side?

Isaac James [00:27:51]:
First one was luck. So first one was during my first year. It was in June. I had LinkedIn in, message in, mailed a candidate. He was a VP of sales. And I called him about an individual contributor sales job. And I was just getting into the sales world, knew nothing about it. It was like I shot way too high on the ladder.

Isaac James [00:28:12]:
But he kind of laughed about it and he's like, hey, man, not interested in that job at all. But I do need to hire somebody for my team. Like, could you help me out? And I was like, sure. So stumbled upon it. I think we placed two people with him that year. So I was like, man, that's great. So that was client number one. Client number two was, I was working on a really niche civil engineering job, which I no longer do civil engineering jobs for that reason.

Isaac James [00:28:35]:
Don't enjoy that space. But I was Working on a really niche job, and I found a really good candidate for them that they passed on. It just didn't work out. And I was like, man, I know this guy's got to be tough to find. So I just went and NPC'd him around everybody else in the area and a company bit, you know, wanted to talk to him. So that was the npc. And then the third client I got was actually a. It was kind of a give me for Mike.

Isaac James [00:28:58]:
He was like, hey, I heard this company was hiring. Like, you should call them. So I called them and they turned into my third client, and they're gonna repeat business with it. Like, I just closed a deal with him this month. So appreciate that, Mike. Thank you for sending them my way. So that was kind of how I got started was it was a weird hodgepodge of, like, luck, a little bit of help from Mike. One was kind of a skilled npc.

Isaac James [00:29:18]:
And then from there it was starting to master the NPC and still getting a little bit of, you know, a little bit of handouts from Mike of, like, hey, I heard from a candidate this company's hiring, or like, I just heard in the rumor mill, you should call them, that sort of stuff. So kind of a mixture of that and then going and really finding my own business.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:36]:
How did you, like, a lot of times recruiters, like, if they started on the recruiting side, learned recruiting, got great at recruiting, and they started doing a little bit of the sales side. Like, sales is almost like a bit of a scary different world. How did you build the confidence to really dive into the sales side of the house?

Isaac James [00:29:56]:
Yeah, yeah. I think part of it was I saw, especially after kind of lucking out on a first client and closing a couple deals with them, I saw just on my commission, the difference that it makes of having a full size deal, like, you get 50% more. So I was like, this is great. Like, this is worth whatever risk, whatever, like, scariness comes along with making these calls. And there definitely is, like, a scary taboo of, oh, you're on the sales side now. Like, it's intimidating. You're calling CEOs, you're doing whatever. And so I'll admit, like, it was a little bit intimidating at first, but I found, I think the biggest thing for me is I thought as I'm making these calls, like, if I stumble or I say something wrong, they're going to just like, laugh.

Isaac James [00:30:37]:
Laugh me off the phone, basically. And I realized pretty quick of, there's no set script of what you're supposed to Say it's like you're calling these people, they have absolutely no idea you're calling. It's a cold call. So they have no idea what you're going to say. So like, there's no expectation. It's just you make your call and really it's kind of cliche. But the worst thing they can say is no. It's like, what are they going to do? Like, if they laugh at you, okay, great, it doesn't really matter.

Isaac James [00:31:02]:
You just hang up the phone and they're gone. Like, you don't have to talk to them again. So like, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? And that could turn into a million dollar call. Like you can do with a candidate. You can place them one time, probably maybe twice with a client. It's like you can do, you know, 100 deals with them. So the value is so much, you know, the higher the than the risk and there's really not that much risk. So I think once I started building the muscle of just making the call, just make the calls, that got over the fear factor.

Isaac James [00:31:31]:
And that was year two was just build the muscle of making biz dev calls and doing it, figure out how to do it. And then year three was figure out how to do it well and like become efficient at it and realize that you are bringing value to the table. And it's like, so, you know, if a client hangs the phone and laughs at you, it might be their loss, but somebody else, you know, needs what you have to offer. So that was kind of how I got over that initial. Huh.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:58]:
Now like you said, so year three, you were pretty much all in sales side of the house. Almost like the training wheels are officially gone.

Isaac James [00:32:07]:
Yeah, year three, Mike and I had a conversation that was a, you're out of the nest. It was like, you're all right, man. And I had done year two for me was, was probably split in half. A mixture of full side deals and split deals. January, year three, we sat down and we hired a couple more people and it was like, all right, you're a senior recruiter now. Like you got somebody under you. It's time, it's time for you to go completely full desk, you know, like cold turkey. Stop on my jobs.

Isaac James [00:32:34]:
You figure it out. And so January, I had an overflow of stuff from December from the year before. So I had a great January, February, March were kind of rough. It was like, you know, I had some deals coming through, but a lot of it was I was cranking through biz dev and, you know, some. Some clients weren't working out. Some I was having to, you know, fire some bad clients and find new ones. But it was actually like just building a desk that I can sustain myself on. So Q1 didn't have great numbers.

Isaac James [00:33:03]:
And it was like a couple other people in the company were above middle leaderboard, and I was like, I don't like that. So I don't like that at all. So I just grinded it out and now, you know, year one kind of actually, or, excuse me, year three, actually built my. My desk to where now I'm 100% full desk.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:18]:
And year three, like, you were coming in, like, at a. Like, with the full focus of a full desk, you're looking at a 500k year for yourself.

Isaac James [00:33:26]:
Yep, yep. And that. That was the goal. So I had done. I had done 400 the year before on kind of a split on, you know, like half Mike's, half mine. And then year three, we knew we were like, hey, coming in. It's going to be a lot more biz Dev, especially the beginning of the year, to really get the wheel in motion and pick up more clients to where you can sustain yourself and maybe a team. So you're probably going to take a hit for the first little bit.

Isaac James [00:33:51]:
So the goal is 500 for year three and then scale up from there based off a full desk.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:57]:
So I'm going to ask some questions about the how soon, but, like, right now or we'll say on average, now that you're working a full desk with recruiters supporting you, what does your day look like and how is it blocked out?

Isaac James [00:34:12]:
Yeah, I think a challenge for this year was maintaining structure of. There's a lot of different things to do now. There's clients to manage, there's clients to go get, there's people, team members under me to manage meetings, to have conversations, to have questions to answer. I need help. So I, I kind of got smoked. Q1 of like, I don't know what to do with my time and how to manage it all. It's like I come in and what I would normally do, I'm getting pulled into a meeting to talk about, you know, something that's not even really related to my desk. I got to figure this out.

Isaac James [00:34:45]:
So I kind of struggled a little bit with how to maintain structure. And so now what my day looks like, and I would love to say it's the same every day. I haven't quite figured out complete uniformity and maybe that's okay, but I come in and for the most part, the morning still looks pretty similar. I come in, I catch up on what I'm, you know, what came in from the day before. We have our team meeting. And then from there I really try to get a grasp on what I'm doing. And so typically what I'll do is if I'm doing biz dev, which I should do every day, but I don't end up doing every day. Typically biz dev comes in the morning, I'll do biz dev.

Isaac James [00:35:22]:
And usually it's really similar to what I would do for a candidate side recruiting day. And so I have a spreadsheet that tracks all of my biz dev prospects, my active clients, pretty much everything. So I'll go through my spreadsheet and look at, hey, who am I calling today? You know, Maybe I've got five target companies and I'm hitting three target people for each of those companies. I got 15 total people to call instant emails to. I'll pop all them into different tabs. I go through one by one, I call them. And so typically what I'll do, the first outreach I always do is just a cold call. It's, hey, my name is Isaac.

Isaac James [00:35:57]:
You know, this is my NPC pitch. Basically, if they don't answer the phone, I immediately send an email with that, that basically same talk track in the email. And so from there I alternate calls and emails. And so some days it's like, you know, certain companies I'm just emailing real quick and then let me find people to call. But that's the beginning of my day. You know, that'll take me, depending on how many people answer, how that goes, you know, like one to two hours usually. Then I'll reevaluate and kind of plan till lunch, go take lunch. And then I come back and then it's more candidate side focused of, you know, I'm doing the same thing.

Isaac James [00:36:31]:
I'm figuring out the job that I'm working on. I'm building out the list, I'm calling the list. And for this year, I've had to become a lot more efficient at doing the recruiting searches because like, hey, I've got biz dev competing, I've got a team to manage that's competing with my time. I don't have two hours to go and sift through LinkedIn recruiter and try every keyword in the book. Like, I gotta figure out how to do this more efficiently. And so that was a big focus for year three was, hey, become really good at searching quickly for candidates that Way I can spend more time on the phone. And so that's what, you know, that's another thing that I've done. And then by the end of the day it's pretty similar.

Isaac James [00:37:07]:
A lot of that is my appointments kind of get all the appointments out of the way. You know, I got calls to make from 4 to 5:30 that are set up and then I'm out for the day. And typically I try. When I first started managing a team, really at the beginning of this year, I found it really easy to get just pulled every direction. He was like, hey, I have a question. Can you come sit with me and show me this? I was like, oh yeah, sure, I'll do that. And then I forget what I'm doing. Now I try to be a little more structured of, hey, let's set specific meetings that we talk about everything and then you have questions throughout the day.

Isaac James [00:37:37]:
Like I can answer them, but I don't have time to go sit down for 30 minutes and figure it out. Like let's plan those out beforehand. So I think a big word for me in year three was efficiency and learn how to do all those different tasks in a more efficient manner. So I, you know, my, my head doesn't explode.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:54]:
But the people on your team, are they sitting next to you kind of like how you sat next to Mike where they're just hearing everything that you're doing?

Isaac James [00:38:01]:
Yeah. So we are all, including Mike, we're all still in a bullpen. So we're all like right beside each other. Mike has to pop into the office and do, you know, kind of behind the scenes run the business. And those are some confidential conversations. But for the most part he's out there too. So we're all right beside each other. Which makes it nice, easy of like, hey, if you got a question, you can tap me on the shoulder and I can answer it for you real quick.

Isaac James [00:38:22]:
Instead of you're working remote, I got to send you an email and we got to set up a zoom call.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:27]:
What is like the bd? We got some questions around the bd. What is a biz Dev? Cold call. Cold call. Can't even say cold call today sound like.

Isaac James [00:38:36]:
So for me, the main way that I do it is based off the mpc and I might have a couple other things of like, I work in some really niche areas of manufacturing. And so for that or you know, technical sales, I can call and be like, hey, my name's Isaac. This is what I do. I work with these clients who, you know, like, I know they're your competitors. You should work with me. Let's talk. So occasionally it'll be those types of calls. For the most part, what I do is I find my npc.

Isaac James [00:39:05]:
I make sure it's somebody who is desirable, who's relevant, and then from there, it's just a really quick pitch. I'll be like, hey, Ben, my name's Isaac. We've never met before. I'm a recruiter and I'm working with a sales Engineer who's got 5 years experience with this specific set of products. You know, last year they sold $5 million. They're looking at potentially changing jobs. I know those people are tough to find. I'm sure you could probably use somebody like that.

Isaac James [00:39:28]:
Would you want to see their resume and kind of go from there? So that's kind of what my pitch has evolved into at this point. And I really focus on candidates that I know bring value. And so it's less of what I started off doing, which is, hey, Ben, my name's Isaac. I have this process engineer. Could you possibly use somebody like that? And just like, cross my fingers and hope they're like, well, gee, Isaac, we actually do have an opening for that role of now. It's, I'm calling you people that I know are desirable and bring value, and you're probably going to want. And it's like, if you don't want them and I might even tell you this, that's fine, I'm going to go call your competitor down the street. That's kind of what my biz dev call looks like.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:08]:
How many touch points is it? Are you typically seeing right now to go from zero to a client where you're submitting candidates?

Isaac James [00:40:19]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say for me, and there are some, you know, the dream is like, cold call, it goes great, we hit it off. I send the contract, you sign. I've got some of those that are like, it's great. It was one touch point for the most part, doesn't happen. I would say typically, on average for me is probably three to five. And that might be, you know, the first conversation might just be an email back and forth, and then we jump on the phone. And so I would consider that two touch points of like, we emailed, we set it up, we actually talked, and now I sent you the contract.

Isaac James [00:40:55]:
We sign, we get something going. I've had as many as probably like 15. I had one I signed this year that I called for a year and like, we would talk on and off, and they'd be like, oh yeah, I do need somebody like that. And then it would fizzle out. Ah, nevermind, we're not going to sign you up. So I'd have people as much as that, but typically three to five. And usually at this point, if it gets beyond that, something's off, like we're kicking the tire, something, and I'll just call it out. I'd be like, hey, man, it sounds like this is not the right time.

Isaac James [00:41:25]:
So unless I'm wrong, you know, feel free to call me back. I'm going to move on elsewhere. And sometimes they'll call me, hey, I'm so sorry. I've been slammed traveling, whatever. No, I need this role. Like, let's do it. And a lot of times they're like, hey, yeah, not the right time for us. Appreciate it.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:40]:
How did you really make that mental switch from I hope to I know and I understand the value that I bring.

Isaac James [00:41:50]:
I think for me there was no epiphany. It wasn't like, oh my gosh, I have to change something. For me, it was just time and learning the space. And so when I first started doing these calls, I was really just hoping it was going to work out. I was like, man, please say you need this person or give me one of the runarounds. I don't need this, but I need this instead. And then as I kind of figured out, hey, I'm actually pretty good at filling their roles. Like, I do bring value to the table.

Isaac James [00:42:18]:
And I started to learn the market well of like, I know these people are valuable. I know what they look for in a candidate. I know if this is what they're going to hire. I think it was just confidence based off of information and confidence in my ability to do the job. And once I built those up through experience and doing it, then it was like, I know I can do this. Like, I. I know you probably need this person and I'm the guy to go find it for. Like, there's nobody better at finding this specific thing than me.

Isaac James [00:42:46]:
So let's work together. And if not, it's really no skin off my back. Like, I will go call your competitor right now and they're probably going to sign me up because I know that they're probably looking for this person too. So I would say for me it was really just like an experience thing, actually doing it and then being like, oh, okay, that makes sense, I can actually do this.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:05]:
So it was like you just kept on working out every day and you turn around and realize that, like, oh, this muscle works.

Isaac James [00:43:10]:
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly how it was.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:13]:
Like, everything that you know now, like, if you got the chance to look back and talk to yourself in year one, year two, and the beginning of year three, what exactly did you tell yourself at those points of time as a new recruiter?

Isaac James [00:43:26]:
Yeah, I would say year one for me was. And I, I, I kind of did this. I'm proud of what I do year one, but was be a sponge. It, it was a great time for me to learn to grow. So just be a sponge. You kind of have a safety net. Learn as much as possible and really focus on mastering your craft. Like, be really good at whatever part of recruiting you're doing.

Isaac James [00:43:46]:
For me, that was year one. Not everybody walks into that situation. So for some people, it's, hey, you got to sink or swim. Like, you got to rock and roll. Another thing, do the output, you know, whatever, whatever the goal is, shoot above it for your KPIs, your output, whatever. Year two, for me, I would say if I could go back and tell myself something. Change how you think of what you bring to the table and change how you talk to clients. It's no longer kind of subservient of, hey, like, can I please help with this job? Can I do this? Can I have your feedback about this? You're a talent partner.

Isaac James [00:44:19]:
Like, you bring value to the table, so act like it. And if you have a client that's, you know, treating you bad, fire them and go find somebody else. Playing for year two, I kind of wasted time and I allowed myself to be put in a. Like, please can I have this situation that I didn't need to be in? And then year three, I would say become, and this was a focus for me, but become more efficient and figure out how to do that in every aspect of what you're doing. Become more efficient in bd, become more efficient in candidate side recruiting because you don't have as much time to do it anymore. And become better and more efficient at leading a team and, like, really imparting value into your team members.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:57]:
What does ongoing training look like within your team or within the organization? Stuff that other people can also duplicate? Yeah.

Isaac James [00:45:07]:
I think for us, when I look at, at the beginning, when you come on board, not much has changed. We've kind of honed it a little bit, but the biggest thing for us is trial by fire. By day three, everybody's making cold calls probably at this point. Day two, like, year one is your first day of school. You're coming in, you're Going to figure out you're getting set up. The next day you're calling. I think that has so much value of people build up cold calling into something it doesn't need to be. They take three weeks to do niche training and figure out how to recruit and do all this and then do it.

Isaac James [00:45:38]:
We don't do all that. So it's trial by fire. And then we'll have specific meetings with different team members, really focusing on one aspect of the job. So that's the beginning. Ongoing training. A lot of what we do is still a lot of, you know, trial by fire. But we'll bring in like, Mike has made great friends in the recruiting industry. We'll let people, maybe once a month, Ben Mina, a great one, but other people that will come in like a Mike Anderson.

Isaac James [00:46:07]:
You know, if anybody out there knows Mike Anderson, great. You know, sometimes we'll do calls with him. We'll go in the conference room in the office. You can see right there, which is across the con from us, and we'll go, we'll sit down and for an hour and a half, we'll do a Q and A with Mike Anderson. That just brings a different vibe and feel to the table. So we'll do things like that once a month. And then a lot of what we're doing is you go sit down with your team lead once a week, and for my team, it's me. For Mike's team, it's Mike.

Isaac James [00:46:33]:
And sit down and discuss what's on your desk, what are you working on, what needs to be improved. And let's. Let's focus on that. Like, let's sit down for 30 minutes to an hour. And this aspect that you kind of need to work on and sharpen your tool set for, let's do it. And that might be of you kind of watch me do it. And let's explain why we're doing that. Or some of it is you call, you make calls, focus on this aspect.

Isaac James [00:46:56]:
And I'm going to critique after every call. That's a lot of what we do. We'll record calls. That's a big one. I think recording your calls and listening to them back with somebody else, that can teach you. Be like, hey, why did you say that? Maybe we don't say that. We say this instead and just nitpick. That's what it is.

Isaac James [00:47:13]:
And you kind of have to have thick skin of, I need somebody to sit down and nitpick my call and figuring out, hey, what am I not doing great? What do I need to work on what do I need to incorporate that I'm not doing? And that really launched me to a new level. And it was uncomfortable the first couple times because you sit back with your boss who's listening to your call and maybe it wasn't a great call and you're just kind of like, that was not as bad as I remembered it being. But that really kind of launched me to a next level of mid in the moment, I catch myself about to say something that I probably shouldn't say and frame it a different way and make it a lot more effective. So a lot of what we do is really, I would say, like, train on the go of let's do the job and kind of critique it and tweak it as we go.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:59]:
So I know, I know we've covered a lot, a lot of tactical, which is definitely awesome. So thank you for breaking some stuff down. Before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything that I did not ask or go deep enough on that you think we should spend a little bit of time on so that another recruiter listening to this could be.

Isaac James [00:48:16]:
Like, you know what?

Benjamin Mena [00:48:17]:
I can have a great launch. I can hit that 500k mark, I can hit the 400k mark in year two. I can do exactly what you are doing.

Isaac James [00:48:25]:
I think one thing that I have found to be really important that I think I took for granted when I first started because I didn't know how good of a situation I had until I met other people in the industry and kind of heard about, oh, it's not normal to sit down under a million dollar biller and be the only employee and you work on all their jobs. Most people don't have that luxury. So for me, in talking to other people and hearing from the industry and people that don't make it a washout, I think something that's so crucial and I'll just say you can come in with not a lot of help and not a lot of guidance and you can make it like you can just grind it out, but it's harder. Like, it's way harder. And you might get unlucky for six months and you get fired and your output was fine, your skill set was okay and you got unlucky. I think something that a lot of people don't realize they should do, which they should, is find a mentor. And if you walk into a situation like, I did great, like it was a blessing, some people get that luxury, others don't. So then it's on them.

Isaac James [00:49:25]:
Like, if you're walking into a situation, you know, maybe it's a massive company, maybe it's a small company where you don't have a lot of guidance. You're kind of neglected. It's on you. You should go find somebody that you can learn under and that might be you go buy somebody's training material and spend 500 bucks on like a Mike Anderson course or somebody's course and figure it out. Or maybe you pay and you do one on one with coaching with somebody. I think there's a lot of value in that. Or maybe you just find somebody who's in your area that, you know, happens out of the goodness of their heart to meet with you, you know, once a month or once every couple weeks and go over stuff. I think it's invaluable to have a mentor who can really guide you through the process as you get started.

Isaac James [00:50:03]:
Because the first, the first six months is hard to figure out, recruiting to navigate. It's a tough game. You know, Mike was talking with this guy Macon, who's great, led multiple like major recruiting firms and he's in the statistics are what they are. 20% of people will make it in their first three years of recruiting. The odds aren't great that you're going to do it. And so find somebody who's done it and done it well and learn under them. And like, you might have to take the risk and you know, pay some money up front, but I think it's, it's so worth it in the long run.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:36]:
Love that. Awesome. Well, jumping over to the quick fire questions, they do not need to be quick answers. You have somebody that's, picture this. You have somebody that's going to be starting on your team next week. They make it through the day one, day two, day three, day four. They walk in at the very beginning of the day. They sit down with you like, hey, I see what you're doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:56]:
I see what Mike is doing. What's the single piece of advice that you would give me to have a successful career in this?

Isaac James [00:51:02]:
I think resilience is such a big thing and it's not, I mean it's not like a super practical, I'm going to do this everyday skill set. It's more of a mindset of just sit down. And sometimes what you need to do is stop looking at what's going around and just focus on your task for the day. Whatever it is, if is it make 80 calls. Just focus on making your 80 calls and stop looking at, oh no, I have a zero on the board for the Month. What am I going to do? And start panicking every day that you have a zero come in and just focus on doing it. And I. We've seen people in our company, they might have a great first eight months.

Isaac James [00:51:41]:
This has happened a couple of times. You know, they have a great start, like really hot. They're just on fire. All of a sudden, they hit the inevitable slump, which happens to everybody. They have a couple down months and they mentally can't handle it. It's like they've done great for the year. They can recruit, they can do the job, they're going to bounce back, but they can't handle seeing that zero. They can't handle the draw going negative.

Isaac James [00:52:04]:
They freak out and they quit and they kind of just like crash and burn. I've seen it happen several times. And even as I'm in year three, I've been semi successful. First couple of years I had last month, November, I zeroed. It was my first zero of the year. And I was like, or no, I'm sorry, October, I zeroed. And it was one of those, like, I got unlucky. Things just didn't shake out and I didn't have that deep of a pipeline.

Isaac James [00:52:30]:
It was kind of like, oh, crap. Like there's not a lot going on. Even a couple of years in. You're like, whoa, the doctor creeping in. Can I do the job? Was I getting lucky? You know, am I good at this? What is it? And so I had to basically have a talk with myself and it was like, I'm not focusing on the board. I'm not looking at what's going on. I'm not looking at who else is building the company. I'm focusing on my task and I'm going to go do a bunch of biz dev and a bunch of candidate side calls.

Isaac James [00:52:56]:
Nobody's going to outwork me for the rest of the month of October and the month of November. Nobody in the company's going to outwork me. On Halloween, I stayed till like 7:30. It was a Friday Halloween. Everybody's out having fun. I'm in the office, it's getting dark. I was like, I zeroed. Like, I got to grind this out.

Isaac James [00:53:12]:
And so I think just the ability to kind of put the blinders on. And I'm just going to do this and that's all I'm going to focus on. And it will work out for you. It's like, if you hit the slump, it happens to everybody. You're fine. Just focus on doing what you're supposed to do and it's going to work out. You don't always have to focus on the result. Just focus on the task at hand.

Isaac James [00:53:32]:
And I think that's something I would tell somebody Day four, if they come and ask me, you know, what do I need to do to be successful besides the obvious of make your calls, you know, learn, do that sort of stuff, come in and just focus on resilience, like when things don't go your way, keep going, keep pushing through and it's going to work out.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:50]:
You read books or are you more of like a podcast or YouTube learner?

Isaac James [00:53:55]:
I do. I like reading. I. I not a podcast fan really, besides recruiting podcasts, but outside of that, I don't really watch anything. So the Ben me to podcast, I will watch that. I watch that one. Other than that, I do like to read. I'm not big into, like, business books.

Isaac James [00:54:13]:
Mike's given me a couple.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:14]:
And what's been your. What's been the one that. I mean, it doesn't have to be a business book, but what's been the book that's had the most impact on you?

Isaac James [00:54:21]:
For me, my Bible, I read it every day. I'll read it during lunch and then typically before I go to bed. So I block out my hour lunch break is like my sacred time. I have my reset, nobody comes and bothers me, and I just get in my Bible. And I think it's, you know, for some people it might sound unorthodox, but for me, like, there's no better book sales and recruiting. It's dealing with people. And there's no better book that talks about dealing with people and teaches you how to do that than the Bible, in my opinion. And so for me, I think it's been so influential in my life outside of work, but also it's influenced a lot of what I do at work.

Isaac James [00:54:56]:
And so I think sometimes I'll walk into situations where it's like, man, my first reaction is to handle it in a way that I probably shouldn't. You know, whether it's a client that's kind of pushing my buttons or a candidate that's, you know, something's going haywire. And it's kind of like, oh, man, you type that email and you gotta backspace everything. And so for me, that's the lens at how I look through life is all right, what does, you know, what's my. What did the Bible say about what I should do here? And so I'll apply that. And a lot of times it works a lot better than If I had just done it the eyes of James Way and shut off the email that I probably shouldn't have shut off. So that's been it for me. Another book.

Isaac James [00:55:30]:
So Mike gave me this and that's how we got the name. Carnegie Search is Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People. I know that's a really popular book. I think that was. He gave that to me before I started the job and was like, hey, you should read this before you come in day one. And so that kind of also influenced a little bit of how I, you know, learned to talk to people in the sales world and the mindset of coming into it.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:50]:
Do you have a favorite tech tool?

Isaac James [00:55:53]:
I really don't. I would say I'm semi old fashioned for my age group of. I really just like recruiting recruiter and like Excel. Those are. And I mean zoom info is obviously nice to get numbers, but I like using the tools that are in Recruiter and since we paid, you know, whatever is 20 grand a seat for it, they should have some pretty good tools. But I use the notes religiously. It's really nice to have a person's profile pulled up. You have them on the phone, you just pop the note tab, you type it in and then every time you go look at that person's profile, you have a note on there.

Isaac James [00:56:26]:
So I try to utilize every tool Recruiter gives me because I use recruiter 95% of my day. So honestly, that's probably the biggest tool that I use tech tool wise.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:36]:
So just for Those listening, your second year is 400k. You're looking at 500k this year for your third year. Your tech stack is pretty simple.

Isaac James [00:56:45]:
Very simple. Yeah. I'll have people ask me, you know, on LinkedIn, other recruiters like, hey, what automation tools do you guys use? What are you using? I'm like, nothing. I literally just use recruiters. Yeah, exactly. That's what I do. And then we, we have like Bullhorn as our ats. Mike has to like pester me sometimes to use Bullhorn because I'm terrible at it.

Isaac James [00:57:04]:
If I could show you my screen right now, I probably have 60 resumes just saved on my desktop that need to go on the ATS that I will eventually put in at some point. So I mean, I, I literally, it's just Recruiter in my phone.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:17]:
I knew that your tech stack is simple and that's why I want to make sure to ask because like it's always like, hey, what's the hot new tool? It's great Hearing about the tools. But, you know, sometimes maybe the phone is just the best tool of the day.

Isaac James [00:57:29]:
I think so. And people always ask me. They're like, oh, what email automation guys use? I'm like, I don't. I just send out an email. I put in my spreadsheet that I email that person and what day to follow up. And then I just follow up and I write another email. It's like, it may not be. I might save 30 seconds by having it automate, but to me, I.

Isaac James [00:57:49]:
I just do it that way.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:51]:
So in reality, you've built a million dollars off a spreadsheet?

Isaac James [00:57:55]:
Pretty much, yep. Cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:57]:
I know that you've. You work with Mike, and I love Mike, and Mike is amazing. He's fantabulous. But you've also been on some podcasts recently, and you've shared some knowledge, and because of that, I know that you've been hit up by people. You just said a few times that you. People ask you some stuff. I'm sure they're asking you, like, how you did it, what your BD is. And that's why I asked you some.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:15]:
Like, you walk through with your bd, with your npc, all that fun stuff. So hit the rewind if you want to go back to that. But all those questions that you're getting, they're all tactical. Do you ever wish or, like, during all these questions, if you're like, I wish they would just ask me this, but they never do. What would be that question and what would be that answer?

Isaac James [00:58:34]:
That's a great question. Because I do get. I mean, I have people hit me up all the time, and they want to, you know, they want to know my tech stack, they want to know my routine. You know, they want to know how to do a specific NPC call and what to do for that. And I think those things are great. And it's kind of weird to have people hit me up because I don't feel like I've made it yet. It's like, I look at Mike, who, you know, Mike's probably going to Bill, I think, like, 1.5 this year. And it's like, Mike's got it figured out.

Isaac James [00:59:00]:
Mike knows what he's doing. And to me, it's like, I'm still. I'm young in the game. Like, I'm still learning, trying to figure it out. So it's kind of. It is weird to me to have people hit me up and ask for advice. And I'm like, okay, I guess, like, by the numbers, I'm I'm not bad at this, so I probably have something to share. So I think, you know, in terms of like, I wish people would ask me this, I would say, you know, for me it, it's probably more about the specific how to do NPCs, emails, calls, what my script looks like and how I do it.

Isaac James [00:59:31]:
Because I think a lot of people, you know, like we just talked about with the tech, tech stack tools and stuff like that of they ask questions that the answer to that is not going to change the game for them. Me giving you like, let's say I do have some crazy cool automation tool. Is that going to add 100k to your billing or 200k to your billing? It's probably not. But if we talk about what you're saying on a biz dev NPC call that very well might add 200k to your billing just by changing your script and changing how you think about things. So for me, I think a lot of people, in wanting to do better at the job, they ask questions about things that aren't directly related to the job. It's like some nice to have tools or some, you know, hey, what's your schedule? How do you break down your day of, you know, specifically it's like, I mean you could structure your day just like I structure mine. And that doesn't mean that you're going to have the same results. It's more about what I'm actually doing during those time periods.

Isaac James [01:00:27]:
So I think for me that's what I would focus on is you got to think of ask a question that's actually going to change the way you're doing things and that's how if I'm, because I'll reach out to, I'll hit Mike Anderson up with some questions about, you know, this or that or if I'm talking to Mike, you know, Mike Williams about certain things of I want to be intentional with my time and the time that I'm borrowing from them on asking things that are actually going to have a really big impact and change the way that I'm recruiting in a positive way and not just, you know, save me 30 seconds from a new automation tool or something like that.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:01]:
And this might be my last question, and I know we talked about it in the pregame. What was one of the biggest lessons that you took away from good old Mike Anderson?

Isaac James [01:01:09]:
Yeah, I think for me a couple things that are related. One thing is he is, I would say it came off as almost aggressive the way that he works with his candidates. Mike is A ultimate straight shooter. It is right to the point. There's no sugar coating, there's no fluff. It's. Mike's going to ask a very direct question and he's going to expect a very direct answer. And if you don't get that, we're not moving on to the next question.

Isaac James [01:01:34]:
It's like he's going to go until you give him what he wants. And so I learned that candidates will bend a lot more than you think before they break. And it's like, logically think about it. If somebody really wants this job, are they not going to take the job because this recruiter kind of pestered them a little bit about specific questions, like, no, that's kind of ridiculous. So I think for me, I learned that. And two, Mike, one of the biggest things that he focuses on it is honesty. He's extremely transparent in the way that he talks to candidates and the way that he talks to clients. And I think it's so refreshing and I think it's refreshing to both candidates and to clients to have somebody who tells you exactly how they're going to operate and then does that.

Isaac James [01:02:17]:
And it's like, hey, man, like, if you've got a candidate who they tell Mike Anderson that they're whatever, they're interviewing five places, his client's number three. And after interview one, they're still number three. They're probably going to get pulled from the process and he's going to go tell the client, like, hey, you're this person's third pick. Do you want to continue? Who else is doing that? Like, what other recruiters are doing that? Nobody's doing that. They're just, they're not going to tell the client, hey, you're third choice. They're just going to cross their fingers and just hope it's going to work out and that person's going to get an offer and they're going to turn it down and then that client's not going to want to work with them again and they're going to wonder why. And it's like, because you didn't tell them upfront. So I think for me, that was one thing that was eye opening of Mike is ultra honest and ultra straight to the point.

Isaac James [01:02:58]:
And I think it works so well because people appreciate it. It's way more efficient. You eliminate a lot of kind of, you know, the baloney that's going on here and just get straight to the point. So I think for me, that was, that was one of the major things of, you know, not necessarily a Specific day structure, day to day, you know, strategy. It's just, that's who Mike Anderson is and how he runs his desk. I think it's, it's so efficient.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:22]:
I think I probably need to get him back on in 2026 again. If he was fun to have a conversation with.

Isaac James [01:03:27]:
Yeah, yeah, he's great. Another thing is the, the way that he, he spends a lot of time creating the emails that he's writing. He writes in a way that's, I mean, it catches your attention, it hooks you in and that's, you know, that's one of the main focuses of BD is you got to catch their attention. They're getting hit up by 100 emails a day from different recruiters. You got to stand out. And so he writes his emails in a way that stands out. And again, it's the same way that he talks to people. There's no fluff, there's no, you know, artificial sweeteners in there.

Isaac James [01:03:58]:
It's straight to the point. I have this candidate. Here's why you should want to talk to him. Do you want to see the resume? Yes or no? Go from there. And once I started changing my biz dev and doing it a lot more that way, a lot more efficient and a lot better results.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:12]:
Isaac, we've covered a lot and I got two last questions before I let you go. As I've been watching the sunset behind you. For those listening, first of all, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Isaac James [01:04:25]:
For me, I'm on LinkedIn a lot, just my LinkedIn content. Feel free to connect with me, shoot me a message, whatever it is. That's really the only social media I'm on. So if you want to follow me, LinkedIn, that's the way to go.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:36]:
Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners before I let you go?

Isaac James [01:04:41]:
Man, I think we've touched on pretty much about everything. I would just say as an encouragement to those, you know, whether you're stepping into recruiting, whether you're in recruiting now. One thing that I have found the, you know, probably the most joy in, and I think that has directly resulted in my success is I found that I love the process of recruiting. I just love the day to day. I love talking to candidates, I love doing prep calls, I love talking to clients. I love doing BD calls, cold calls, all of it. And some of it, you have to build the muscle before you enjoy it. For the gym analogy, you walk in the first day, it hurts like it sucks.

Isaac James [01:05:18]:
You're going to be sore. It's not going to be fun. Recruiting is kind of the same way. A lot of these you have to build the muscle of and then you see the results and then becomes fun. But I've learned that even, you know, despite what's going on on the board, what numbers are, I just love doing the daily tasks of recruiting. I just love the grind. And I think for me that's been so instrumental in my success is just focus on the grind of what I have to do and come in and focus on. I'm not going to be outworked, I'm going to work the hardest.

Isaac James [01:05:48]:
And if somebody's got a higher number on the board than me, I'm going to work twice as hard. But it's. I'm just going to focus on what I need to do every day. I'm going to do that to the best of my ability and then come what may and, you know, hopefully it's good results. If not, I might need to tweak something that I'm doing, but I'm just going to focus on my output and then kind of let what comes, comes.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:07]:
Isaac, I just want to say thank you for sharing and if you're a listener, whether you're in year one, year two or year three, there are so many action and actionable takeaways that you could walk away from with this conversation. How you can literally maybe even double your desk by the end of the year. Those first few, like that first year of two are hard as hell. What can you take away from this conversation can absolutely change it. So that's the reason why I wanted to interview you. I'm so glad that Mike hooked us up was because of the impact that I know that you are going to have on we'll say little Isaac when he was first starting out. So I want you. This is probably going to go live in 2026, so think about this.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:55]:
This can be the absolute year that you make all your goals and dreams come true. As Isaac said, put in the work, fall in love with the grind, fall in love with the workout, and it will come. Keep crushing it, guys.

Isaac James [01:07:11]:
Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it.

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Isaac James [01:08:21]:
To this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.